Racial tensions in Chapel Hill in the late 1960s

Holton describes the tensions between black and white Chapel Hill students during the early years of desegregation. When the local black high school closed, few of its traditions and trophies transferred to the newly built integrated high school. Black students faced harsher discipline than their white peers. Additionally, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. heightened the pre-existing tensions. Consequently, mounting racial tensions erupted in a racialized disturbance at the integrated high school.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Sam Holton, March 28, 2001. Interview K-0206. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

SAM HOUSTON:

They decided that they would offer the opportunity there for the black students that
wished to attend to attend. And so many of them decided to attend that
they decided to close the Lincoln High School. The
Lincoln High School-. There is some misunderstanding
apparently in more recent times as to how that happened. Some people
coming in were under the impression that there had been a unilateral
move on the part of the school board, and it had not. I was not on the
school board at the time, but the school board had raised the issue with
the black community as to what they wanted, and the individual parents
indicated what their, what they wanted their students to do. So, that
aspect of it probably was handled correctly. Now, the black high school
was much smaller than Chapel Hill High School. The black population in
Chapel Hill, not perhaps like Northampton County, but the black
population in Chapel Hill was, I reckon about twenty-five percent as
large as the white. Maybe less than that. Over time, there was some
tension among the high school students as the whether the traditions of
the Lincoln High School were being lost in the process of combining the
school. The school newspaper kept the same name, the mascot kept the
same name, and that sort of thing. One of the early issues was how they
were going to select marshals for graduation. And the final solution
there was to have a black marshal and a white marshal. So, they had
co-marshals. Later, or perhaps along about the same time, the other
questions with regard to their trophy case, with regard to the name of
the mascots, and that sort of thing. So, they did change the name of the
mascot to something that was not identical with
what they had earlier. I think they kept the same school newspaper and
yearbook titles. So those things which the adults probably
hadn't thought much about, became big issues with the
students. Now, shortly after I came on to the school board, there was
a-well, I wouldn't call it a riot-a
disturbance in the hallways in which the black students were demanding
more attention. It occurred on the day that the school was undergoing
its visitation for accreditation. So, we had a lot of visitors, both
black and white-members of the accreditation committee. I was amused
later. There had been-. I had overheard a comment on the part
of one of the junior high school principals, a black principal from
Charlotte and one of the associate superintendents-I think he
was an associate superintendent at the time-from Wilmington,
said that kind of thing would never happen in either of those places.
Well, both of them had more, , serious disturbances over some of the
issues. So, our situation, it was a tense situation. It was not too long
before the assassination, and I'm-I don't know
whether it was a year, or a part of a year, or maybe two
years-assassination of Martin Luther King. And the black communities, I
don't know whether you had-well you weren't old
enough to have been around for that occasion-but you probably had a
different kind of situation in Northampton County than you, than we have
had, we had in the Piedmont area. The community-. Well, they
had curfews in Durham, and Charlotte, in Greensboro.
And they had some actual vandalism arising out of some of that tension.
Actually, we had school board meetings in the elementary school over at
Northside. And we had instructions from the chief of police, I reckon. I
know it was the chief of police or the sheriff. We had instructions to
lock ourselves in the building and then to notify him when the school
board meeting was over to provide an escort out of the Northside
community. Things were that tense. Now, I don't know that any
of us were really as frightened of it as the perhaps the authorities
were. To be sure, there was no real problem. In connection with the so
called-. Well, in connection with the disturbance there were a
half a dozen or so black students who had been violent enough to require
some discipline, and I don't remember what it was, but in the
process the-. I was elected school board the same time Howard Lee was
elected mayor- so you get a little better sense of the racial
situation in Chapel Hill when you remember this was happening at the
same time. It wasn't white against black, [there were] I
suppose some traditionalist perhaps, on both sides. We were invited to
come to a meeting in the First Baptist Church, which you may be aware is
the black Baptist church on Rosemary Street. And we, the school board,
sat in front of the audience and listened to the concerns of the black
parents and other members of the black community. It was, it was a
little intimidating in that here we were-five blacks,
five whites, and one black school board member looking across an
audience that was completely black with no way out of the room except to
go back through the crowd. So, that's a memory we have of
that